New Bloom (Taipei) — A proposal by the Ishigaki city government in Okinawa, Japan, to rename the disputed Senkaku-Diaoyutai Islands in order to reaffirm Japanese claims of sovereignty over the islands has led to nationalistic responses in Taiwan from among members of the Nationalist Party (KMT) and members of the Pan-Blue camp.

The Senkaku-Diaoyutai Islands are a chain of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. The islands are claimed by the China, Taiwan, and Japan. To China and Taiwan, the islands are known as the Diaoyutai Islands and are administered under the auspices of Toucheng Township, Yilan County, Taiwan. For Japan, the islands are known as the Senkaku Islands and are administered under the auspices of the city of Ishigaki, Okinawa.

The Ishigaki city government has recently proposed renaming the islands the “Tonoshiro Senkaku Islands” as a means of reaffirming Japan’s claim. This has led to a counter-proposal from Yilan county magistrate Lin Zi-miao of the KMT and other Yilan politicians to rename the islands as the Toucheng Diaoyutai Islands.

In the wake of the proposal by the Ishigaki city government, a demonstration by Pan-Blue political groups took place earlier this month, along with criticisms of the Tsai Ing-wen administration for failing to reaffirm the territorial claims of the Republic of China (ROC). Although the Tsai administration has insisted that ties with Japan remain strong, wishing to build stronger political and economic bilateral relations to ward off the threat of mainland China, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Joanne Ou nevertheless condemned the actions of the Ishigaki city government in an official statement.

In a sense, conflict over the Senkaku-Diaoyutai Islands can be seen as a contest between Chinese and Japanese nationalism; though one notes that the version of Chinese nationalism advocated by the KMT in Taiwan, ROC nationalism, is to be distinguished as a different variety of Chinese nationalism from the Chinese Communist Party’s nationalism.

Despite the Tsai administration’s interest in breaking away from the KMT’s ROC nationalism, it is still forced to maintain the territorial claims.

Moreover, it is believed that China, Taiwan, and Japan are interested in affirming claims of sovereignty over Senkaku-Diaoyutai islands not only because of nationalism, but because of economic interests. Whoever controls the Senkaku-Diaoyutai islands will have sovereignty over the ocean waters around them, which will allow for fishing and mineral rights. There are thought to be undersea oil reserves around the Senkaku-Diaoyutai islands. To this extent, the Senkaku-Diaoyutai islands could prove a strategic location for countries seeking to expand their geopolitical influence in the East China Sea.

The response to Japanese nationalist efforts to reaffirm claims over the Senkaku-Diaoyutai Islands has been a renewing of Chinese nationalist claims over the islands from the Pan-Blue camp in Taiwan. However, it is a different matter altogether when elements of the pro-unification Left in Taiwan have somehow taken to circulating a petition denouncing Japan’s actions as infringing upon the sovereignty of the ROC, claiming that Chinese territorial claims over the Senkaku-Diaoyutai islands go back to the Ming dynasty.

One wonders what is politically “Left” about responding to Japanese nationalism by doubling down on Chinese nationalism. This is particularly true seeing as the Senkaku-Diaoyutai Islands are uninhabited and that the countries in the region that are interested in claiming them do so out of nationalism, with their likely aims of using the islands to advance imperial projects or for the sake of resource extraction.

However, the actions of the pro-unification Left should not be surprising: much of their “Leftism” is simply Chinese nationalism dressed up in the garb of Leftism, with the inherent association of the political Left with China. A pivotal event in the emergence of the contemporary pro-unification Left in Taiwan was the “Protect the Diaoyutai Islands” movement in the 1980s.

In line with how its purported Leftism is in reality a form of Chinese nationalism, the pro-unification Left in Taiwan has the tendency to view anything which opposes Japan or is anti-Japanese as Leftist, claiming that this opposes Japanese imperialism. Yet this fails to take into account how actions by the “two Chinas” against Japan can be for the sake of advancing geopolitical interests in the region.

Outrage from the Taiwanese pro-unification Left regarding the issue of the Senkaku-Diaoyutai Islands is just another indication of its degradation, and how it fails to offer anything which is not simply another form of Chinese nationalism.

This article was originally published in New Bloom.

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